Subterranean Homesick Alien

"Subterranean Homesick Alien" is a song by English rock band Radiohead from their seventh studio album OK Computer (1997). Its title references the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" from Dylan's fifth album Bringing It All Back Home (1965),^[1] of which critics have noted.^[2]

"Subterranean Homesick Alien"
Song by Radiohead
from the album OK Computer
Released	27 May 1997 (1997-05-27)
Recorded	July 1996 – 6 March 1997
Studio	St Catherine's Court, Bath, England
Genre	Jazz[1]
Length	4:27
Label	Parlophone Capitol
Songwriter(s)	Thom Yorke Jonny Greenwood Ed O'Brien Colin Greenwood Philip Selway
Producer(s)	Nigel Godrich Radiohead

Background

"Subterranean Homesick Alien" takes inspiration from multiple things, the most prominent being a poem Thom Yorke wrote in college where Yorke imagined himself as if he were an alien observing humanity, "If you're an alien from another planet, how would you see these people?" was the idea according to Yorke.^[3][4] Another idea for song arose after Yorke hit a bird while driving home.^[1] It was originally a "folky" acoustic duo by Yorke and Jonny Greenwood titled "Uptight".^[1]

Composition and lyrics

Radiohead used electric keyboards to emulate the sound used in Bitches Brew, a 1970 jazz album by Miles Davis.^[5][6] The New York Times mostly likens it to "Pharaoh's Dance" from Bitches Brew.^[7]

Recording

The song's instrumentation features a guitar with effect pedals played by Jonny Greenwood and a Fender Rhodes piano played by Thom Yorke.^[7]

Release and reception

"Subterranean Homesick Alien" was released on Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. When ranking Radiohead's 40 best songs for the Guardian, it was placed number 22, stating: "Plunged into a shimmering dreamscape, Yorke observes a fleet of aliens surveying humanity." and "Radiohead exist to petition for the second option; here, however, was sweet ambiguity".^[8] Marc Hogan ranked it number 17 in his ranking of every Radiohead song, writing "Yorke's man-who-fell-to-earth observations of “uptight” life on the third planet does justice to the title's nod to Dylan — one of the few artists whose music thrives more on inscrutability than Radiohead's".^[2] In Consequence of Sound's ranking of every Radiohead song, it was ranked 37, Nina Carcoran wrote the track's commentary, writing that it "drips each of its notes like a spoonful of honey, letting guitar lines and keys backstroke through an ocean of reverb in a beautiful ode to outer space and the ever-present feelings of nostalgia and longing".^[9] Author Dai Griffiths stated it "'fucked with' in solidly earnest, industrial-music fashion. On the other hand, there’s a tendency – Alanis Morissette was the first, so far as I know — for female singers to perform the slower, 'torch songs' faithfully."^[10]